In the context of workplace culture, people may feel apprehensive about speaking or presenting, pitching new ideas, interacting with colleagues in a new way or challenging situations, or raising objections that go against their peers or leaders. And all of that is normal if it is a mild form of apprehension; something to make someone take pause and think about their actions and words before uttering them. If that apprehension escalates into full blown anxiety then we are in psychologically unsafe waters for the individual and potentially the organization.

Many aspects of how the human brain works are starting to be proven within the neuroscientific community. These systems almost certainly developed eons ago, because what we know of brain physiology and evolutionary capacity for change in general suggests that the human brain is unlikely to have changed much since we first started walking. This simply must be by design.

The idea of rating a team’s “Agile Maturity” has always made me uneasy. An agile maturity rating is intended to quantify a team’s progress along its agile transformation journey. Numbers and verbiage differ everywhere. Maturity ratings typically depend on a subjective assessment of how “agile” the team’s practices, behaviors and mindset are; for example, a team that does not practice automated unit testing could begin at a 0, and when they are proficient at it perhaps that indicates they are now at a 3.

There is always a new beginning, no matter how unlikely it seems at times. It may be hidden in the depths of what has ended – a place you sometimes don’t care to look too deeply into. But it is often found somewhere closer to the middle, passed by hurriedly on your way to where you’ve ended up, looking for a way to begin again.

In our new 6-part series for 2022 we tackle #AgileWaysOfWorking with #OpenSpace, #LiftOff, #Teams, and more. The final episode has the team reflecting on why they were drawn to all things agility in the first place.

All of the steps taken when tracking issues come from a genuine desire to try to meet that impossible deadline. The problem is that this “lock-down-and-report-out” approach will ultimately hinder the team’s ability to deliver and management’s ability to focus on what’s truly important. Tracking the goals they are trying to achieve, rather than the specific, ever-changing issues that are blocking those goals, will give management much more clarity around the current status of the projectand, most importantly, what that status means for the enterprise.

In our new 6-part series for 2022 we tackle #AgileWaysOfWorking with #OpenSpace, #LiftOff, #Teams, and more. The fifth episode is about the value of scrum training which focuses on more than the certification exam that is optional.

In our new 6-part series for 2022 we tackle #AgileWaysOfWorking with #OpenSpace, #LiftOff, #Teams, and more. The fourth episode builds on the Liftoff and onto how to set up your team for success.

Coaching, as a toolset or discipline, provides a different way to frame the conversations we have. It is one that demands our acceptance that the other person in the conversation is the only thing that matters. It requires that we set aside our own notions of what the problem might be and how to fix it, an action in itself that can be quite challenging for a race of problem-solving primates.

In our new 6-part series for 2022 we tackle #AgileWaysOfWorking with #OpenSpace, #LiftOff, #Teams, and more. The third episode walks viewers through how to get an Agile product or program started with Liftoff for Teams.